Ex-Pres Clinton Criticizes Hydroelectricity in Amazon

Former President Clinton didn't call out GDF Suez or the Brazilian government for its largescale hydroelectric power projects in the rainforest, but did call for alternatives to damming for electricity at the World Sustainability Forum in Manaus, Brazil, on March 26, 2011.

Former President Bill Clinton said this weekend that he was against building more hydroelectric dams in the Brazilian Amazon, according to Folha de São Paulo, the country's largest daily. Clinton was speaking at the World Sustainability Forum in Manaus, the largest city in the Brazilian rainforest state of Amazonas.

Although he did not call out the latest hydroelectric project, Belo Monte, in his speech, or the one being built by France's GDF Suez on the Madeira River in the Western Amazon state of Rondonia, he said he had "no patience" for people who said there were on alternatives to building hydroelectric dams.

"What is the alternative? You need electricity and you need to preserve the forest. But 20% of the world's oxygen comes from the Amazon. It's not an easy decision, but you have to think about these things, and about the future of your children and grandchildren. You also have to consider the indigenous population, the wildlife, and the plant species that can be used to cure illnesses and will be affected by building these dams," he said, adding that one other alternative was to dig up old landfills and burn the recyclable matter to create energy.

Clinton's call for the consideration of alternatives to new hydroelectric dams puts him in elite celebrity company. Hollywood director James Cameron is vehemently opposed to the building of the new 11,200 megawatt power station, Belo Monte, set to be constructed along Amazon tributary, Xingu, later this year if all of the conditions to an environmental permit are met. Cameron compared the building of Belo Monte, which would be the third largest in the world if constructed, as a battle similar to the one portrayed in his film Avatar. Only in this one, the enemy is the Brazilian government and a consortium of mostly government owned power companies called Norte Energia.

An estimated 20,000 people will have to be relocated in order to build Belo Monte in the desolate northern Amazon state of Para. Hundreds of acres of virgin forest will be inundated with water in order to build the reservoir to power the turbines that will generate electricity. No native tribal lands will be directly impacted, but tributaries of the Xingu River, in which those tribes rely, could dry up sufficiently enough in the dry season that would make Xingu tributary, the Bacajá River, particularly impossible to navigate. Around 2,500 native peoples could be affected by such a situation.

Belo Monte would be Brazil's second largest power station, trailing the massive Itaipu dam, which Brazil majority owns in partnership with the Paraguay government.

Hydroelectricity powers nearly all of Brazil. At least 82% of the electricity in Brazil is generated from dams, according to the Ministery of Energy. Brazil currently has a surplus of energy, but will face a deficit by 2015 -- a year before the Olympic Games come to Rio de Janeiro -- if it does not build out 5,000 megawatts of new power stations each year.

Many of the newest power stations are wind power. Some are coal and natural gas. But hydroelectric dams -- all much smaller than Belo Monte (under 1,000 megawatts of generation capacity) are being built all the time in the country as part of the government's clean energy policies.

The problem is that most of the water resources to build the new dams are all located in the Amazon biome, which accounts for nearly 50% of Brazil's landmass.